"Consumer-orientated and media-saturated cultures have given rise to `a new narcissism'...within cultural studies there has been a recent proliferation of accounts of the rise of narcissism in analyses of consumer culture, celebrity culture and new media...narcissism is the pathology of our time...narcissism acquired its meaning and force as a critical term through its stigmatizing attribution to specific sexual and social groups...the contentious cultural and political history of narcissism needs to be acknowledged within contemporary theoretical accounts of `cultural narcissism' and `media narcissism'."